Wednesday, November 23, 2016

No Holds Barred: Richard Schaefer on His New Boxing Promotion, Ringstar Sports

On this edition of No Holds Barred, host Eddie Goldman spoke with Richard Schaefer, the chairman and CEO of the newly-formed Ringstar Sports.

The debut show for this new boxing promotion will take place Saturday, December 10. On that card, co-promoted with TGB Promotions, WBA featherweight champion Jesus Cuellar (28-1, 21 KOs) will face former bantamweight, super bantamweight, and featherweight champion Abner Mares (29-2-1, 15 KOs), and IBF super welterweight champion Jermall Charlo (24-0, 18 KOs) will face Julian "J-Rock" Williams (22-0-1, 14 KOs). This will take place on a Premier Boxing Champions (PBC) event at the Galen Center at USC in Los Angeles, and will be shown live in the U.S. on Showtime.

Also, Ringstar Sports recently announced the signing of their first fighters to promotional contracts, 2016 U.S. Olympian Carlos Balderas and his brother, amateur standout Jose Balderas, with both expected to be making their professional debuts soon.

We spoke with Richard Schaefer by phone Tuesday.

While some boxing promotional companies only run events headlined by fighters with whom they have promotional contracts, Richard Schaefer said that Ringstar Sports will be doing things differently.

"I'm going to sign my own fighters. I'm going to do my own TV deals. I'm going to do my own venue deals, my own sponsor deals, my own whatever," he said.

"If any other manager, advisor, comes and asks me, 'Hey, could you put together an event for my fighter?' I'm going to say, 'Yes, no problem. Here's my fee.' And if they want to pay it, great. And if they don't want to pay it, then no problem. But I definitely see this as the way I'm going to run the business."

Schaefer also said that when he served for many years as CEO of Golden Boy Promotions, they did the same thing in promoting events involving fighters who were not under promotional contract to them, most notably Floyd Mayweather.

We also discussed how he took time off after leaving Golden Boy to reflect on his life and his next moves; how his passion for boxing led him right back to it; false reports and rumors in some of the media about what his plans were; why he was in no rush to form a new boxing company; his business relationship with manager/advisor Al Haymon; the importance of the PBC series; the role of the boxing media and its often unnecessary "negativity"; the need to promote and highlight women's boxing; the importance of social media; and much, much more.

You can also listen to No Holds Barred via Stitcher through iOS or Android devices or on the web here.

The PodOmatic Podcast Player app is available for free, both for Android at Google Play, and for iOS on the App Store.

The No Holds Barred theme song is called "The Heist", which is also available on iTunes by composer Ian Snow.

No Holds Barred is sponsored by:

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